


a light that burns twice as bright burns half as long

by balimaria



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Analysis, Child Abuse, Extreme apathy time babey, Gen, I mean this is azula so, Introspection, My First Work in This Fandom, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, POV Azula (Avatar), Reluctant Introspection, firefam - Freeform, its like a story/introspection/story sandwich yknow, just to be safe tho, kind of, kind of?, mild Self-harm, some dialogue, wrote this at 1am so please forgive me for any errors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balimaria/pseuds/balimaria
Summary: Her carefully crafted armor of sanity had split along the fault lines, laying bare everything she had fought so desperately to kill. Azula didn’t want to look down. She didn’t want to see inside herself and find only cobwebs. She didn’t want to see her own dried and fraying veins, devoid of any color or feeling or life or hope or love.Or: Mom said it's my turn to project on Azula
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	a light that burns twice as bright burns half as long

Azula remembers vaguely how it felt to feel.

She had been four, maybe five. It had been a warm day, even by Fire Nation standards. But she hadn't minded- you could throw bread at the turtleducks no matter the temperature. 

So there she was, sitting by the pond, shearing her fingernails through blades of crab grass to see how thin she could get the strands, when footsteps had crunched through the grass behind her. 

Abandoning her pastime, Azula swiveled. A grin dawned on her face, pushing aside baby fat that had yet to be shed. Her brother was there! He hardly ever came to see her by his own will anymore- too caught up in his silly game of swords. But he was here now! The brother in question was shifting on his feet, the pads of his fingers skimming along the seams of his tunic. Mother was nowhere in sight, which was unusual for Zuzu- normally her brother stuck to her side like a badgerbee to honey.

 _Always the flighty one,_ she thought with a smile.

Zuzu didn’t even have time to get a word in before Azula was climbing up his shoulders, knotting her fingers into his hair maybe just a little too hard. But her brother was tough- big kids were always tough. Maybe that was why he always had so many burns along his arms. “Battle scars,” Mother had called them, a sad smile drawing the lines of her face. “From fighting for you, my dove.”

She would not say anything more. She never did.

But those were sad thoughts, and this was the time for happy thoughts! So she dipped her mouth next to her brother’s ear and cried, “Zuzu!”

Her brother smiled, and Azula returned it with twice the radiance. 

“Hey, Azula,” he said. Quieter, but still happy. 

Azula slid down Zuzu’s torso until her boots thumped against the grass. But she was a touchy child, so she immediately slipped both her hands into one of Zuzu’s and leaned against his side.

“What are you doing?” she said slyly (though it didn’t quite work as well as when her friends did it- her voice was still too young.) “Mother said you were off practicing your fire-throwing thingy, so you couldn’t play.”

Then, a hopeful gasp escaped her lungs. “Didja change your mind?” she whispered, and Zuzu’s smile dropped.

...Had she said something wrong? Well, at least Father wasn’t here- he always seemed to blame Zuzu for everything. Maybe it was because he was a big kid.

“...Ah, yes. I did change my mind,” he said finally. “What's the point of firebending when you can’t spend time with your favorite sister?”

Azula smiled again. It was fine- of course it was! Zuzu had just missed her.

So she cheered, dragging him over to the edge of the pond as she did so. The turtleducks quacked at the disturbance, but quieted at her offering of bread. 

And all the sudden things didn’t feel so happy anymore. Zuzu was staring into the pond and he wasn’t even touching the bread and he was clutching his arm all weird- like it hurt or something. And then he was tearing up the grass and letting it fall into the water and there was this look in his eyes that Azula didn’t recognize yet.

“Zuzu?” she asked hesitantly. Gold met gold in the light of the sun and suddenly her brother was _crying._

“You can’t call me that anymore,” he whispered.

Azula didn’t understand. It was her nickname for him- something shared between only the two of them. Why couldn’t she use it anymore?

So she asked.

“Why?” and maybe she was a little close to tears too because she was four or maybe five and her brother was crying and her brother wasn’t supposed to feel sad and she was just a _child-_

“Father will get mad at you,” he said, nearly too quiet for Azula to hear. 

“But that hasn’t made him mad before.” It was said as a statement, but had the cadence of a question. And Zuko just looked at her.

“Things get different as you get older,” he murmured, more to the pond than to her. “I just… don’t want him to hurt you too.”

And Azula had smiled- trying her best to make him happy again. “You’ve been listening to uncle too much,” she giggled.

Zuko did not smile. He just brushed the tears from his face, stood, and walked away.

“Bye-bye, Zuz- Zuko!” she called. She ignored the stumble in her brother’s gait at her call.

Zuko was a big kid, and she didn’t really understand all the big kid stuff he did- at least not yet. But she did know that he just wanted to protect her, like mother had said.

But as the years cycled through, the color that had always seemed to christen their relationship, their _world,_ began to chip and dull. 

It started small. It always did. Poison slipped into her words, slowly shoving away her own inadequacies each time they appeared until, eventually, they were Zuko’s. At first, she told herself it was just harmless teasing. But once she saw the way her father’s eyes glowed when it happened, it began to rot into every word she said to him. Zuko was a big kid, she reasoned. He could handle a few extra bruises and burns if it meant Father would love her.

When she was nine, she realized her father had wanted Zuko dead, and had since her brother was born with only cinders in his breath. He was a failure, she knew. Just a shape among shapes. It’d make no difference if he was gone.

That night was the first night she’d tried to smother him in his sleep. But even as she was holding the pillow against his face, all she could think of was how _happy_ Father would be. He would never hate her like he did Zuko. He loved her firebending- hers was even blue! Maybe he’d even hug her like she’d seen Mother do with Zuko.

That night was the first night Mother had called her a monster. It hurt at first. But it didn’t have to. So she did what she always did. 

“A serpent’s tongue,” her mother had called it.

She didn’t listen to Mother anymore.

She only cared about Zuko, anyways. She was never impressed by the way she could burn down a tree in seconds flat, or hit every battle dummy at once. She just pulled Zuko close to her side and told him that she’d do everything she could to keep him safe. 

When she was eleven, something in Azula began to crack. She hadn’t noticed at first- it happened slowly, as all things did. Her father’s praise began to feel flat. When Mother hadn’t come back, it was like she barely even noticed. And as she watched Father’s hand sink into Zuko’s flesh, his face dripping like candle wax between his fingers, she smiled, like she had at the pond. But the color had long since peeled away. It was all just shapes now- shapes of people, shapes of blood, shapes of fire licking against simmering flesh.

Azula might’ve once said it felt bad, but now it didn’t feel like anything at all.

-

She was angry, she told herself. Furious even. To prove it, she thrashed against the chains holding her taught, screaming and screaming until her throat was raw.

But the pain felt like something. So she kept screaming.

Her carefully crafted armor of sanity had split along the fault lines, laying bare everything she had fought so desperately to kill. Azula didn’t want to look down. She didn’t want to see inside herself and find only cobwebs. She didn’t want to see her own dried and fraying veins, devoid of any color or feeling or life or hope or love.

So she didn’t. She knew exactly what would happen if you shared how you felt- the proof lay before her, in the taut and shiny scar tissue stretching across her brother’s face.

At least Zuko had managed to protect her by example. That was one drop of success he could pour onto the salt flats of his failure.

Azula tried to feel angry at him. Tried to tell herself that she _despised_ him. Tried to hate everything he’d taken from her.

But any feeling had long since simmered into oil for her fire. 

_But that’s what Father wanted,_ her mind whispered. 

She did not feel better. She did not feel at all.

-

He visited her every so often. Azula didn’t know why. She didn’t like it- but then again, she didn’t not like it. She could admit that, now. The cold stone of her cell had churned away the only thing she’d had left, the only mask that remained- her fire.

She didn’t act any different towards him. Not really. The channels of speech were already dug so deep that it was pointless to try and crawl out of them, even if they had long since lost any meaning. But with every poison-laced jab, every cruel insult, she could feel the silk being spun in the spaces between her bones, in the lattice of her muscle, in the hole where her heart had beat when she was little.

He always left soon enough. As much as she tried to hide it, it was obvious she had splintered long ago. 

-

One day, Zuko- oh, apologies- _Firelord_ Zuko, took her out to the pond. 

She was still in chains, but Azula barely felt the weight of the metal against her wrist. The sun above felt nice, in theory. It’d been awhile since she’d seen it.

She did not feel happy. 

They sat, Zuko feeding the turtleducks, and her with her hands knotted in the grass and the water reflecting against her eyes.

Zuko was talking. 

“...Used to call me Zuzu…”

“...Always made me feel better…”

“...Don’t know what changed…”

“...Miss you…”

That idiot. Couldn’t help but still miss her, even after everything she’d done. Always the flighty one, and yet he couldn’t even learn to let go.

-

He kept taking her back there. It wasn’t really like she had a choice, but she wouldn’t complain at the chance to stretch her legs. 

Sometimes there were other people with her. A tattooed child. A young girl. A boy with a wolf tail. She knew who they were. She didn’t care.

They would talk. Azula would listen and snap insults and tear at every loose thread she could see.

-

“What are you hoping to do?” Zuko asked, when the others had left. His tone brought back fuzzy memories of another day at the pond.

Azula sneered.

“What are _you_ hoping to do?” she snarled.

And Zuko stared into the pond, watching the turtleducks make waves in the green water.

“I miss you,” he said, ignoring her petty jab. “I’ll never forgive you, but I can’t bring myself to hate you. You just seem so… wrong. I just...

“I miss you,” he repeated.

And something flared in her. The charred kindling sitting at the bottom of her web-laced torso sparked, and before she knew it she was laughing. Not a kind laugh, Agni forbid- it was her old, mocking, cutting laugh. 

But it felt different. It _felt._

Zuko didn’t really understand. He’d always been terrible at reading people, which was somewhat of a blessing in Azula’s case. She might’ve put the guard’s spears through her gut if Zuko had realized that _he_ was the one who was actually reigniting what she’d thought was lost permanently.

Mother has said that Zuko would always look out for her. She had been wrong, for the most part. They’d clashed and fought more times than she could count and Azula knew for a fact that half the scars on her brother’s body were because of _her._

But she didn’t feel so empty anymore, so maybe- for once in her life- she’d been right.


End file.
